Director of Photography

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What happens when a society built on violent, dictatorial
power faces collapse? How do we deal with violent youths whom we cannot
control? How much freedom should we give those who we allow to shape our
children from boys to men? Vincent Grashaw’s SXSW drama “Coldwater” tries to deal
with these challenging questions in the form of a narrative about a juvenile
boot camp, the kind of place that thinks violence and Army training techniques
are the way to deal with teens whose parents no longer have the answers. It’s a
promising topic for a drama, and Grashaw’s talented leading man carries it
until the filmmaker steals it from him and destroys everything built up in the
first hour. The final act of “Coldwater” is horrendously misguided, the kind of
insincere melodrama that erases the memory of what came before. It’s a
particular shame because there’s an hour of decent filmmaking here.

The title refers to a remote location at which parents
essentially give up the protective rights to their children and allow alpha
males to form them into “better citizens.” These places exist, and, as the end
credits inform us, do so with little governmental oversight, leading to
injuries and even death. When your son has reached a point where bad behavior
becomes violent and illegal, what do you do to keep him out of jail? It’s a
serious question facing hundreds of families.

Grashaw clearly believes that places like Coldwater are not
the answer. From the minute that Brad (P.J. Boudousqué) gets there, Coldwater
is painted as a testosterone-heavy corner of Hell. The teens are forced to run
miles every day, given little water along the way, and that’s the highlight for
many of them. Sprayed with fire hoses, strung up by their wrists and left
overnight, etc.—Colonel Frank (James C. Burns) seems to honestly believe that
his reform structure will turn boys to men but it’s a harrowing process to do
so. And, perhaps worst of all, Frank has a system in which the “good kids”
become Trustys and eventually employees of Coldwater, which naturally
encourages in-fighting among the barracks.

When a friend of Brad’s named Jonas (the naturally talented Octavius
J. Johnson) gets hit by a counselor-driven ATV on a run, Coldwater starts to
fall apart. The incident brings in some authority figures and Colonel Frank
begins to sense that his days may be numbered. What happens when a mad man
starts to lose his control? You can imagine that it gets worse before it gets
better. And when one of Brad’s old buddies (Chris Petrovski) comes to
Coldwater, it’s the match hitting a lake of gasoline.

The majority of what works about “Coldwater” for its first
hour can be laid at the feet of Boudousqué, who looks like a young Ryan Gosling
and has a bit of that actor’s remarkable internal gravity. The actor is allowed
to essentially play multiple iterations of Brad, as we see flashbacks to what
got the young man to Coldwater in the first place, watch the struggle of his
early days, and end with a character who seems broken to the degree that one
could argue the Colonel’s strategy worked. He’s a shell of a man by the middle
of the film, but he’s more of a man than a rebellious teen. There’s a daring
film there—the idea that these facilities are breaking troubled teens down to
the point that they may be more “mature” but they’ve lost their identities in the
process.

“Coldwater” is one of those films that we know can’t
possibly end well, and yet the final act feels unearned and manipulative. The
subtlety of the performances in the first two acts are discarded for explosions
of violence and surprisingly tidy resolutions. Grashaw offers a climax in the
traditional sense of the word in that the film almost becomes an action movie,
and strains credulity by taking that route. Instead of the character drama, “Coldwater”
becomes something designed to provoke and thrill in the final act when it
should be finding the sad truth of troubled youths and people who abuse the
positions of power granted them. It’s as if Grashaw couldn’t stomach the
thought that these kind of nightmarish situations often don’t have the closure
that filmmaking can provide. And, even though it makes for a disappointing
film, who can really blame him?

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